


The One Where Danny Gets Amnesia

by Beguile



Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Fist (TV), Jessica Jones (TV), Luke Cage (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Banter, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Superpowers, The Real Superpower Was Friendship All Along, Trust Issues, defence mechanisms, disbelief, head injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-25 18:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20376124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beguile/pseuds/Beguile
Summary: “Am I Danny?”“Quit messing around.”“I’m not.”“He’s not,” the man with the horns says. He comes back around, eerie in his dark suit, his glossy eyes catching what little light comes through. “You’re Danny. That’s your name.”“And who are you?” Danny asks.





	The One Where Danny Gets Amnesia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).

> Written for Sholio, who prompted that one of the Defenders gets amnesia, that the other Defenders reassure them, with bonus points for if it happens in the middle of a fight. This was a lot of fun to write. I went with Danny because his powers and abilities have the best explanations. "Why does my fist glow?" "Because you punched a dragon in the heart." "WHAT." 
> 
> Title is a reference to _Friends_ for reasons that are significant to the story <strike>and have nothing to do with my inability to name things</strike>. 
> 
> Special thanks to Dichotomy Studios for beta-ing. 
> 
> Enjoy!

* * *

He groans: he can’t help it. There’s an awful lot in his head at the moment. Blood, mostly. Sound, distantly. Pain, dully, but the longer he tries to find his eyes, the stronger it gets.

“I think he’s waking up,” someone says. “He’s coming to.”

“Danny?” another voice asks.

He manages to get his eyes open a crack. Gray darkness greets him, eventually taking on shadow and shape to become a concrete ceiling. Light filters dimly through a series of narrow slats in boarded-up windows. He turns his head to get a better view, groaning as the pain sharpens, coming to glimpse three very concerned faces before his vision blots out in a flash of white heat.

That pounding comes back. It’s not from inside his skull, it’s from the ceiling, the walls. “We need to get out of here,” a third voice tells them.

“Give him a minute,” the first replies.

“We don’t have a minute,” the second notes.

“I’m sorry,” he tells them, trying again to get his eyes open. This time he waits until his head is in position before he tries, and he manages to catch a glimpse of the three of them through the dark. Two of them an unmasked, a man and a woman, but the third looks like something out of a comic book. “Are those horns?”

The unmasked man pats him on the shoulder. “You ready to move, Danny?”

It’s the second time they’ve used the name. “Danny,” he says, “Is that me? I’m Danny?”  
  
The woman scoffs. Footsteps from above continue to rain down on them. “We don’t have time for this.”  
  
“Just tell me,” he says. The name, it seems right, but only by process of elimination. He doesn’t have any other names in his head to go by. “Am I Danny?”  
  
“Quit messing around.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“He’s not,” the man with the horns says. He comes back around, eerie in his dark suit, his glossy eyes catching what little light comes through. “You’re Danny. That’s your name.”  
  
“And who are you?” Danny asks.

The man in the mask starts to answer. Jessica interrupts him, “This isn’t funny, Danny.”  
  
“No,” the man in the mask says. “It isn’t. And he doesn’t think it is.”

“This is legit?” the unmasked man asks.

Danny lifts himself off the floor. The pounding has reached a peak, inside his head and out, and the implications of the question have finally hit him: they know him, these three, but he doesn’t know them. He doesn’t know anything. Not where they are or what they’re doing or why one guy is dressed like something out of a nightmare.

“Hey, hey,” the nightmare-guy reaches for him, managing to take him by the knee. Danny – if that even is his real name – thinks he might be sick. Could be the concussion or the sight of a real, live Devil. “It’s okay. We’re friends.”  
  
The torrent of footsteps advance on their location. The woman takes her spot by the door. “_Really_ don’t have time for this.”  
  
“But this is happening,” the Devil tells her. He tugs off his devil-cowl revealing an all-too-human face. “Danny. You’re name is Danny. I’m Matt.” He tilts his head towards the unmasked man, “That’s Luke.” To the woman: “That’s Jessica. We’re your friends.”  
  
The footsteps arrive. There’s a loud bang on the door. Jessica leans against it, and despite not looking like much, the door doesn’t move when whoever’s on the other side tries to open it.

Danny doesn’t want to waste more time, but this is important. “Who are they?”  
  
“You don’t want to find out,” Luke says. “Can you move?”  
  
“I…” he tries, but the pain in his head is too much. The foot he gets underneath himself is worthless from the sudden loss of strength in his limbs, the dizziness. Even with Luke and Matt supporting him – “Hey, easy, easy…” – there’s no way he’s going anywhere anytime soon. Not without risking them.

“Go,” Danny tells him. “Go, go…I’ll…do something.”

Jessica is leaning cavalierly against the door by this point. She could do this all day. “Can you use your healing thing?”  
  
“He doesn’t remember his name, Jess,” Luke says. “I doubt he remembers his healing thing.”

Danny takes a break from the deep breathing that Matt’s leading him through to ask, “What healing thing?”  
  
“You do this thing,” Jessica says. A man from the other side of the door shouts something. “Yeah, so is your mom!” she shouts back.

The exchange is so confusing. “He said to get away from the door,” Danny says, “What does that have to do with his mom?”  
  
“You understood that?”

“Yeah,” but Danny can’t explain how. The man's words came out, and he knew them. “How did I do that?”  
  
“There are a lot of things you can do,” Luke says, trying to get him on his feet again.

“Like a healing thing.”  
  
“Yeah. You can heal people. It’s a gift.”  
  
Between Luke and Matt, Danny ends up on his feet, but he doesn’t yet have the strength to stand by himself. He wobbles between the strong grips on his arms, fighting the urge to pass out or vomit or both. “Do you have gifts?” he asks. “Is that why we’re in trouble?”

“That’s one reason for it,” Luke replies.

Matt stiffens suddenly next to Danny. He fixes an ear on the door. “Luke, would you switch places with Jessica? Now?”

The exchange happens in the nick of time. No sooner has Luke reached the door than bullets start flying. Matt tears Danny out of the way so sharply that Danny almost hits the floor again.

But Jessica appears, and once again, despite her slight size, she effortlessly handles him into a standing position. “Your strength,” Danny says, staring at her in awe. “You have super strength. And Luke?”  
  
“Luke’s fine,” Matt tells him.

“Manner of speaking,” Luke replies. The bullets have stopped coming through the door, and while there are visible holes in Luke’s sweater, there’s no blood. He doesn’t even seem to be in pain.

“You’re bulletproof,” Danny says. His mind reels, waiting for something to stick, and while the details make sense in the same way he understood the guy outside the door, they don’t reveal anything. His mind is still infuriatingly blank.

He looks to Matt: “What’s your gift?”  
  
Matt puts his mask back on: “I’m the Devil.”

“Oh, Jesus…” Jessica groans.

“Cover Danny,” he says to her, heading for the door.

The words come out of his mouth on instinct. Some part of himself that’s forgotten but not gone. “I can help.”

“Yeah,” Jessica agrees, propping him against one of the walls. “By staying here.”  
  
Danny tries to argue with her, but she’s gone from his side. Luke throws open the door and the room enters sheer chaos. Gunfire blasting against Luke’s bulletproof chest, him grabbing people, chopping at them, throwing them to the side. The wave of assailants breaks against him, and they find themselves in Jessica’s hands, tossed around like they weigh nothing. Matt has all but disappeared in the dark, but every now and then Danny hears a scream cut short, terror interrupted, and a body lies on the ground, unconscious from their meeting with the Devil.

It’s terrifying on one level. Exhilarating on another. And then frustrating, not in the least because Danny’s stuck clinging to a wall. He heals people, but it doesn’t look like they need a healer, not yet. Is this who he is to them? He hangs by the wall? They seem to be doing just fine without his abilities at the moment.

“Get down!” Matt shouts, so suddenly that Danny drops to his knees. An eternity seems to pass where Luke runs for Jessica and Matt runs for Danny. They reach their marks just as something hits the floor and a shockwave blasts through the room.

Waking is worse this time. Faster, but worse. Danny has to extricate himself out from under Matt, who is nothing but dead-weight. He barely feels his own pain, though he is aware of the stinging in the back of his skull, the ringing in his ears. His vision isn’t clear, no thanks to the smoke wafting through the room or his concussion. But there’s a clarity to his thoughts that didn’t exist before. The last little bit of his doubt has been cleared away, and though Danny doesn’t recognize the thoughts coming to him, he trusts them. He lets himself be guided unsteadily to his feet, lets his right-hand ball itself into a fist, lets his hands come in front of his chest.

His fist is glowing with a warm, gold light. Danny tries not to marvel. Treating the fist like a novelty, like something new, it takes him out of the flow that brought him into this position. He draws a breath, forcing himself back down, back inside himself, trusting that he’ll figure this out. This must be his gift. He is going to heal the room.

More enemies appear at the door. Their weapons are raised, and someone gives the order to fire, but Danny calmly, coolly, follows his instincts and swings his glowing fist in a punch towards all the injured in the room.

A shockwave bursts forth from his fist, surging through the space with the same glowing heat of his fist. The bodies on the floor are knocked back. The far wall cracks, splinters, and bursts. The enemies at the door are hurled into the stairwell, their weapons falling out of their hands.

Danny swings back, his calm façade cracking. They said he was a healer. Do they not know he can do this?

The men on the stairs are climbing back to their feet. Danny glares at them. The same instincts that led him here give him some assurance these men don’t have to die, he doesn’t have to let them, and that satisfies him enough to take another swing. This time he brings his fist down into the floor, shooting a beam an energy through the concrete, taking out the remaining assailants.

He’s shaking when it’s over. The only sense he has left is that of sight, and Danny can’t take his eyes off the crack he made in the floor. The light of his fist fills his vision, and he thinks he might pass out again. Thankfully, Luke arrives, gently nudging him out of his stupor. Jessica appears on his other side, half-dragging Matt behind her.

“Welcome back,” Luke says, helping him up.

Danny needs the help. His knees are shaky. His head is spinning. “You said I was a healer,” he manages to say.

“We said you could heal people. But that’s not all you do.”

“What is this?” Danny asks, holding up his fist, the light retreating back inside his body.

“You call it the iron fist.”  
  
“You got it when you punched a dragon in the heart,” Jessica adds.

Danny almost laughs. “Yeah, right.”

“She’s being serious,” Luke says.

One look at her tells Danny she absolutely is, but he doesn’t trust it. “A dragon. I punched a dragon in the heart.” Luke takes one of his arms and helps him out of the room. “Look, I’m not joking around. I really can’t remember any of you. Any of this.”  
  
“We’re not joking either,” Matt says, wincing from his various injuries. He walks slowly next to Jessica, as they make their way to the crumbling wall. “You told us you punched a dragon in the heart. That’s how you got your power.”  
  
Danny doesn’t understand, and it’s not just the concussion to blame. He stumbles over a few of the bodies on the ground, his heart leaping into his throat at the sight of their singed arms, their broken bones. The groans and moans he can hear come as a cold comfort as they make their way out of the room. Luke, Jessica, and Matt don’t seem to react. They’re so used to walking away from fights, their opponents beaten but alive.

Makes Danny feel good, walking out with them, even if he can’t remember. It’s an instinct again: something he doesn’t know but something he trusts.

His vision is fizzling out at the edges, and he needs some way of staying awake. “What do we call ourselves?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Jessica says too quickly.

“We don’t really have a name,” Matt clarifies.

“We don’t have a name,” Danny says in disbelief. He isn’t sure what’s more shocking: this or the dragon story. “Teams have names.”  
  
“We’re not a team,” Jessica says firmly.

“Then what are we?” Clearly, he’s misread the current situation if they’re not a team. “How do we know each other? Are we friends? Are we enemies?”  
  
There’s an unspoken game being played between the three of them not wanting to speak first. Matt loses: “We’re not enemies, Danny.”  
  
“Okay, so we’re friends.”

Jessica winces. “We’re not-“

“Yes,” Luke cuts her off, “Yes, we’re friends.”

They start up the stairs. Danny finds his eyelids starting to slip closed. His strength is leaving his legs. A rush of panic comes through him before dissipating, quelled by that same instinct that helped him fight for his friends. He has friends.

He hears sirens in the distance advancing on their location, and he lets himself be carried away.

* * *

Happy reading! 


End file.
